I was raised in the country in northwestern NSW and, at age 4, lost most of my hearing from bacterial meningitis. Being a determined little girl, I made my way from a tiny school of 100 pupils to publishing my first novel at age 29, before graduating with a PhD from the University of London.
My first novel, A Curious Intimacy, was published by Penguin in 2007, and won a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award. It was shortlisted for the Western Australia Premier's award and the Dobbie award for a first book by a woman writer, and longlisted for the international IMPAC award. My second novel, Entitlement, was published by Penguin in September 2012.
I am the recipient of funding from Arts Queensland and the Australia Council for the Arts, and I have been selected for residences in Tasmania and the Australia Council's BR Whiting Studio in Rome. My short fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in literary journals including Review of Australian Fiction, Overland, Meanjin, Island, Griffith Review and Southerly.
My hybrid memoir, Hearing Maud, which details the entwinement of my life with that of Maud Praed, the deaf daughter of 19th Century Queensland novelist Rosa Praed, was published by UWA Publishing in 2019. It won the 2020 Michael Crouch award for Debut Biography, and was shortlisted for a Prime Minister’s Literary Award and two categories in the Queensland Literary Awards. I am currently writing an ecobiography of 19th century botanist Georgiana Molloy, Western Australia’s first non-Indigenous female scientist.
Together with author Dr Amanda Niehaus, I am co-editor of Science Write Now, an online journal dedicated to creative writing inspired by science.
You can read more about my works in progress, and my research more generally, on my Research page.
LITERARY DISTINCTIONS
Winner
2020: Michael Crouch award for Debut Biography for Hearing Maud
2009: The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award
2005: Australian Society of Authors mentorship
2001: Matthew Rocca Poetry Prize offered by Verandah
1998: University of Wollongong Poetry Competition
Shortlist
2020: Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Nonfiction for Hearing Maud
2020: National Biography Award for Hearing Maud
2020: Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance for Hearing Maud
2020: The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Book of the Year Award for Hearing Maud
2015: Commonwealth Short Story Prize for ‘Old Honey’
2014: Peter Blazey Award for Life Writing
2013: Elyne Mitchell Short Story Competition for ‘A Mercurial Man’
2012: Martin Bequest Travelling Fellowship
2010: Australian Book Review Calibre Prize for an essay, ‘To Hear in Other Ways’
2008: Western Australia Premier’s Awards for A Curious Intimacy
2008: Dobbie Award for debut women writers for A Curious Intimacy
Longlist
2017: Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize for ‘Depths Exceeded’
2016: Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize for ‘Black Soil’
2014: Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize for ‘Old Honey’
2008: International Dublin Literary Award for A Curious Intimacy
RESIDENCIES
June – July 2022: Hedgebrook Foundation, Whidby Island, USA.
Dec 2020: Varuna/Scribe Residency, Katoomba, Australia.
Dec 2015 – Jan 2015: Australia Council for the Arts B.R. Whiting Studio, Rome, Italy.
June 2013: Ridgeline Pottery and Island journal residency, Hobart, Australia.